Danchitsu

I was interested to watch this morning’s XLBS, where @Guillotine received a well deserved Golden Button for his work testing these very paints on some Chaos Warriors.

Here is a link to his project, and a couple of his shots:

I find it fascinating that Guillotine has taken the same paints and gone in quite different direction.  I’m not sure if I would have immediately recognised the palette, and I have been working with the same paints for a couple of weeks now!  I think this shows the versatility of the set.

Gerry asked the question on the show as to whether these sets could be considered a complete palette?  Guillotine has only used a silver that isn’t from the set, and I can understand why.  The silver in the set is quite dark, so there isn’t a natural bright silver in the set to use as a highlight.  I am going the other way though and, determined to use only the paints in the set, am darkening the silver with the included washes, and then using the dark silver as the “highlight”.

I am finding that the miniatures do have an overall ‘dark’ look, which I guess is the intention, so I am happy so far using these paints exclusively on the models I am working on.

Obvious things that aren’t in the set are a pure black and a pure white.  So I have had to work a bit harder to work within these constraints.  Having done so, I am quite happy.  The Ironclad Grey and the Ivory can substitute for black and white, and as they have colour to them, they can enhance rather than desaturated other colours.

The also isn’t an obvious flesh tone in the set (there is a flesh wash), but you can mix Ruddy Terra and Ivory to make a perfect skin tone with all of the gradations you could wish.  And with the Banshee Brown you can make dark skintones too.

So whilst this is a ‘limited’ palette, I do think it has everything you need to paint miniatures in a grimdark style.  The models I am painting have a bit of everything on them (skin, metal, leather etc) and I haven’t had any trouble so far.  Even the bases are painted 100% with this set.

The models were built and primed and ready to go.  This is the only step where I am using paints that are not in this set – this is my usual prime/zenith routine which has served me well, and will allow me to fully judge the new paints.

Starting with the easiest model first – the little servo skull – and I can already tell that these colours will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of base costs for these models!

I haven’t documented a step by step at this point, as I am very much experimenting.  A little bit of this and a little bit of that, etc.  I’ll probably also come back and do some more on this as the project evolves and I learn more about the set and where the colour scheme is headed, but I am pleased with the initial result!

In fact, spoiler alert, since taking this I have found a way to make that deep red pop a bit more, which really makes a difference, but I will come back to that later.

I wanted a small project where I could use the new sets exclusively to see what they can do.  In theory they should be a complete palette which can be used to create grimdark models, without the need to use other paints.  I was interested to find out if this was true.

Are these paints a complete palette or just a bunch of random colours, intended to fill holes in the Fanatic range?  Time to find out!

My test subjects will be Inquisitor Ostromandeus and his retinue.  These were the 2024 Warhammer+ exclusive models for subscribers (yes, I subscribe, don’t judge me!)

The colours on the box art suggest they should suit the paints, and inquisitors are the epitome of grimdark, so if I can’t use them on these then there is an issue!

Ok, so what’s the actual point of this project aside from aping a great master and debating the pros and cons of non-attribution of artistic works..?

I picked up the John Blanche Masterclass paints from Army Painter as soon as I could (they were preordered and eagerly awaited). I have recently converted over to Army Painter Fanatic paints and am very much enjoying them.  So I had to have these.  In addition to the fact the set was curated in conjunction with John Blanche, to create a set he was happy to put his name to, the paints also fix some gaps in the original Fanatic release.  Common complaints were that the darks weren’t dark enough and the reds were not red enough.  I agreed with these observations.  This set addresses both of those points, so this was something of a master stroke from Army Painter to get these sets out so quickly.

The paints arrived and I was very excited to try them!

Something I noticed when googling for the John Blanche portrait below, was that when you search “Blanchitsu” in google, and choose images, one of my miniatures is the first thing that comes up!  It’s not my website, nor something I have posted, but the creator has it as an example of a ‘miniature in the Blanchitsu style’!

No credit on the image, but I can’t complain given I followed a Marco Frisoni tutorial to paint it.  I can claim no artistic credit for that one!! But I did find it amusing, and take a little pride that something I have done is someplace somewhere.

You can see my pictures of the model in my project here.